[327] Just Be In The Know

I feel like before I die I should ever be striving to convey what I consider to be the truth of my disposition. Foremost because I think it has longstanding implications for your disposition. I don’t want people to be confused. I don’t want you to read my other despotic or seemingly judgmental blogs with the wrong back drop. There’s just a fundamental state I maintain that I think needs to be celebrated.

I have no problems. I don’t hesitate to type it. When I’m bitching about your relationship or life or some confusion, it amounts to “existential angst.” I cannot complain. Another idea I’d like to beat into the ground and restate in everything I ever write; I have peaked. I’m healthy, fed, and intellectually quelled with a roof over my head. I do and always remember my place in lieu of the rest of the world.

The problem is in how people perceive this. You get a lot of jealousy. Like, “why the fuck do you think you’re so happy!?” And I think this has everything to do with missing the point. I call life a game. It’s an exercise. It’s a learning experience. It’s the consequences of cause and effect. It’s not about me, or you, or any one thing you want to base you pathetic conception on. I have fun with it. I play with it. I know that if it were over tomorrow, I was playing the game I wanted to play.

It’s what I hope to change when I get more influence. I want more people to realize that no one is like you. Your perspective has something important for the world at large. No one is going to sound like me. While there are business leaders I idolize and comedians that speak so closely to what I would say on stage, nobody says it or does it like me. Therefore, my message and method is important and has consequence and can impact in potentially significant ways provided I’m speaking to what we all know and think, but speaking to it in my way.

I wish you would think of your life as not having problems. It’s such an unnecessary burden to bog your day or psyche down with bullshit that doesn’t speak to anything. Like, if I feel anxiety, it’s about how I’m going to react to something. Do I beat the ever loving fuck out of you or make a smart ass comment or maybe just shut the fuck up and turn away. I’m not genuinely worried about anything. I’m more concerned with the message I sent and the conception I’d have to defend about myself given a scenario.

I just can’t wait. I really can’t wait. Provided I don’t up and die randomly in a car crash, I cannot wait for the stage. The opportunity to be me or speak me or lay it out like I’m desperately waiting to hear it be said will be a fucking thrill. And I hope I have you laughing. I hope the mother fuckers that know me are like “haha I bet he..OH SHIT HE JUST and are cracking their shit up while the world spends their time judging and re-characterizing. I’d get off on the idea of confusing the fuck out of people or rattling the cages of those not in the know.

It’s around the fucking corner. Get excited.

[326] Right In The Feels

I want to be right! It’s the only thing I want besides all those other things. I want to know when I say something it carries weight. I want to see the consequences of my actions. I want to have a grasp on the situation that sees 10 ways out when all you’re looking at is the gun. It’s insatiable. I’ll never be right about enough things. When I get something right it’s like a drug. It’s the power of understanding. It can surprise you! I love the idea of potentially being right about things I can’t even be consciously aware of yet. Right is right. Wrong is wrong.

There is a right way to convey information. When you pick an end, you can tailor the metric by which that information is heard. Peoples’ perception of your tailoring will claim you are wrong. They aren’t aware there is a right way to listen. Maybe your joke didn’t land; that doesn’t mean you don’t know how to tell a joke. If the joker cares more about the laugh than the message, he can learn your language. If you don’t need to laugh in order to grasp what he’s saying, now you’re getting somewhere.

We’re forced to deal with consequences. It becomes harder and harder to claim it was a joke when you’re addressing a crowd whose language you ought to understand. That is, any reasonable person doesn’t stand up to give a commencement speech at a black college and toss around the word nigger genuinely expecting people to give him a chance and just listen a little closer to the innate hilarity. He’s downright desperately wrong in his acceptance of the consequences of words under specific circumstances.

It’s in the consequences, the science of cause and effect if you will, that I want to be right. Socially, I want to be generally right, pragmatically I want to be calculably right, and personally, I want to be infallible. Clearly, we should define what that infallibility would look like. I base my life on rules that were hard-fought and hopefully overtly rational. For one of them to change, it should be quite the argumentative spectacle.

For example, who’s lining up to persuade me otherwise that people should be healthy? Of course, someone will play the small mind and say something to the effect that “healthy doesn’t quite mean healthy.” And we’ll merrily skip away from the point. Someone will say “look over here at my mentally-challenged brother, which my family loves unconditionally!” Seemingly unaware of the slighted mockery they’ve just made of the situation. No doubt we’ll hear from way left field something to the effect of “if people don’t get sick, how are they supposed to die?”

Along with my premise of peoples’ health being a “should,” an “ought,” and a “go fuck yourself if you could possibly think otherwise” there are natural tie-ins related to what that idea rightly means. It means we should not have poisonous food, or poisonous water, or poisonous air. It means that there are consequences that overwhelmingly people don’t like when they get sick. It acknowledges the reality, ubiquity, and severity of sickness unchecked. It’s as obvious as it is accessible and relatable. That is, if you accept the right definition of healthy.

I think, the blanket statement “people should be healthy” is a right one. “We’ll eliminate suffering due to illness” is a wrong statement. I point this out because people begin to expect outlandish and over-reaching things. To advocate health is not to cultivate a God-complex. But that’s what people will think you are doing, and then it will become about everything besides health.

So try. Shake me from my premise with a brilliant argument and I might change my mind, just be careful the moment I do I’m not dropping the vials of Ebola I’ve been juggling. If you, as a reasonable person maintained on my friend list, were persuaded after the first line and think this is carrying on far too long. I AGREE! But this cumbersome joke of a conversation we get dragged into by long-winded bloggers with more opinions than hairs on their head is why nothing changes. There are, in fact, lawyers that argue health doesn’t quite mean health. There have been people, at a microphone in public, who’ve asked if we perfect technology and can keep people alive, how they’ll ever be expected to die.

It’s hard to be right about something. It’s respectable because it takes work that you can’t fake. People don’t contemplate a bullshitter, they suffer through what’s been forced into their heads. If you’re the victim of a “brilliant” ad campaign and have genuinely longed for some piece of something and it made you sad not to get it, you’ve suffered a bullshitter. If you’ve “never found the right person” because no one can live up to what it takes to understand you or make you feel like a princess, you’ve suffered a bullshitter. You’re no more a man because you drive a big American truck than you are because you shave with 5 razors instead of 1. I hope to be contemplated, not suffered.

There is a right way to think about being right and wrong. Black and white doesn’t exist, but blacker and whiter become clearer the more specific you get. An individual pixel doesn’t tell you this word is white.

Yes, we live in a complex ecosystem with trillions upon trillions of externalities no matter what corner of the existence you want to look. All of it has a history. All of it lives or dies by ideas. It is right to accept the consequences of history and ideas.

One time a guy thought we should get rid of all the Jews (and a few others). This is a patently ridiculous idea that actually made The Holocaust and has been mirrored towards different sects around the world through to modern times. Why? We try to understand it in daft terms like “one day one guy wanted to kill Jews.”

It’s right to analyze political structure, and human psychology, and economies, and incentives, and fear, and opportunism, and every little thing that contributes to a big picture. You have to remember those things don’t go away. An argument from a textbook or quote from “touted smart fuck Ph.D.” does not negate the many windows you can open to let in common sense.

I get tired of feeling like a forlorn fan-girl when I hear people speak, rather eloquently, about shit that’s just obvious. I don’t need a doctor to tell me we should save seeds or a Harvard professor to explain all the bad things that can happen when you don’t hold people accountable. There is no legal argument to be made that makes me believe my vote should amount to how much money I make or that I’m still in a representative democracy.

It’s like we can’t just be “human” anymore when all I know how to do is rightly discern the implications of acting like one. You can’t just live. You can’t just eat and drink. You can’t trust that people will do what’s best, because what’s best has nothing to do with humanity and everything to do with indulgence and predation. We’re too big. It’s not just the litany of ideas but the overwhelming inability to understand what they’re doing to the world around you. It is right to think there are many things wrong with our circumstances. People have done, are willing, and are currently doing you wrong and I don’t even know exactly what it’ll take to change it. And would you look at that, I found my own good argument to feel sick.

[325] Talkin' Bout My Mo-ti-va-ti-on

Let’s talk motivation. Say you’re interviewing a psychopathic killer. If they worked for the mob, their reasons to kill can range from “he pissed me off” to “I was getting paid.” There isn’t an emotional component; it’s simply about what they were expected to do or what they were going to get out of it. But, say your killer is the Iceman, who has a clear emotional attachment to his family. He can choke a guy out over his back and not bat an eye, but the idea of not being with his family while in prison makes him tear up.

I want to know why people are so pushed to go places in their heads. Why is the brain so segmented into seemingly non-overlapping parts? Where did I go and why did I choose to be so motivated to learn about something in the past? How and why does that motivation change with new information, and are those changes good, bad, or arbitrary?

I’m dreading the idea of getting a normal job and working all the time despite my bigger motivation to make and save money. When I look at my capacity, I’m not allowed to doubt myself. Now, I understand Jay-Z believes it ain’t about where you been it’s about where you goin, but if I start pretending I know where I’m going, things are just going to get messy. I’m a conditional being after all, with maybe the worst case of presumptive intentional ego and free will that can exist.

It’s just the clarity with a goal in mind is unmistakable. You don’t read, you search and prepare an argument. You don’t talk, you persuade. You don’t suggest, you order, and people listen. It’s brilliant. I think what might put me back in that mode is currently a goal that feels out of reach. At least, out of reach if I’m to go about getting it while also adhering to a set of conditions that tend to bode happiness and are fairly easy to defend. Let that shit go and I’m practically a slave were it not for all the money I’d be making.

The “emotional” component to my motivation is more of an invigoration. It’s not “this makes me happy.” It’s cycling through the laundry list of implications and potential and never being able to shut it off. It’s something I know I can use to motivate or educate other people. It’s the precursor disposition for what’s needed to dramatically change someone.

Is it worth it to “mock” that for something that simply isn’t worthy? By what “right,” if we’re to believe in such things and maintain a semblance of order and respectability, do I subject that or ignore that or hand it over to the highest bidder? No one will value my time like I do, so why should I play along? I think I might just have a big problem with a limited perspective on ANYTHING else I could do to find a work around. Problem being, everyone else seems to be out of ideas as well. There’s a million ways to make money and spend time, there’s like a handful of ways to do it correctly.

How you define what’s correct is all about what you decide to obligate yourself towards. If killing people equaled a paycheck, sure you got what you wanted and didn’t get caught, but it’s hard to say you got the money in the right way. Is “killing yourself,” or at the very least suffocating or ignoring ideas for money, worth it? See Wall Street, or lawyers.

My concern is the realm of ideas, and I’m supposed to knowingly trample on mine and expect people to find good reason to stick behind theirs? I’d have a kill switch against anything I’ve ever advocated for at the level of mind. Talking myself into a shitty situation is not the same thing as acknowledging “how things are” and it is likely better to consider something as beyond the reach of my circumstance than capacity.

The clichés don’t work. Persistence is most likely to get you somewhere, it’s not guaranteed. Every one person you see loving what they do, there’s thousands who didn’t know what else they were going to be able to. It’s not enough to be smart or motivated. It’s not enough to be nice or genuine. There’s a whole world to contend with. The day I “get my shot,” which is a horribly small way to state it given the circumstances I was born into, it will be because someone with a little (or lot) more money sees that I’m a workhorse or have thought a lot about something. I’ll be only and just as good as when I threw on ankle weights to run through and clean theaters.

And then what? I do something that catches on and I run the media circuit? Two idiots in Colorado get to put all the tv channels on their budget web page because they’ll cook you a burrito and clean up after a party. Brilliant entrepreneurs? I bet you’re dying to look up their interviews on Youtube this second. Or maybe I just do something personally gratifying. Let’s cross our fingers I’ve got a moral core in tune with what will also logically and calculably account for the positive change I bring the planet. This, just so it can inevitably change again. Because who knows if we’ll ever decide to cement things like honesty or accountability into our culture for good.

I can’t seem to find those middle ground people. Ones who start with a philosophy but don’t ignore what may be required practically. You either get hippies or whatever it is “normal” people say and do. Or you get people with excellent advice if we pretend they didn’t have a giant backdrop to suggest, provide, and work in for their “insight” that isn’t always readily available or scalable to your problem.

Keep in mind, I’ve all but signed away everything but the memory of a flame on the candle I hold in my heart for humanity. That could change, but it doesn’t seem like it will any time soon. It’s only the sheer weight of demoralizing sadness with the idea I can’t shake off. Lucky me.

[324] Is There Anybody In There?

So it’s not so much about pursuing happiness as it is about avoiding suffering. To avoid something is to put it outside of your mind or turn it into something different. Avoidance typically plays out in some form of denial, but when it’s projected, it’s dramatically trying to shape the context to fit some form of twisted logic. I think you only do this when you are haunted by your logic engine of a brain. Every time you turn your key and expect your car to start or pick your nose ever assured you’ll get a booger, your mind is using that logic. Cause and effect is always in play and you can recall familiar circumstances.

Denial serves a purpose; it has much utility. There are a million different things at any one time we’d like to think are not true. We know what it looks like. Maybe you have a parent that refuses to accept something fundamental about your personality. Maybe you have a friend who’s in a ridiculous relationship under the hypnosis of superficial bells and whistles. Maybe you reassure yourself every day because what other choice do you have?

I’m a bad messenger. I have something that I, capital K, Know about everyone. It is the only reason I, when I try, always get what I want, it’s the only reason I know how to make you mad, and it’s the only thing that’s ever given me power over tear ducts. I just can’t seem to convince everyone that they know it too.

What I Know makes me cynical. I know relationships are conditional, often convenient, and not a fairy tale. I know how good you feel, I know what questions are struggled with; I know what things you should be doing and saying and feeling in a good one. You do to.

I Know what it’s like to try to believe in God. I know what it is to question, resolve myself to fate, and be afraid of what I’ve done or said. I know what it’s like to want to fit in with a “chosen” crowd or having some kind of divine understanding. I know I’ve never heard or seen a sign, never felt the love, nor have been moved by some other-worldly force. You do to.

You know what’s likely and unlikely. You know enough about human psychology and different ways people feel or expression emotion. And if you don’t know, you know Google exists and friends who have been there exist, and every day you spend not addressing or thinking about something is a lost opportunity.

I feel like in the event there is no hope for humanity, if we’re patently too dumb and too populated to enact any real form of change or longevity, I want to ride it out on a wave of honesty. And if it isn’t yet honest, I want the idea to be pursuing the honesty. 

This plays out in different ways. It’s someone asking me “how ya doing?” at work and I say “not terribly well working here!” Only to meet a disappointed face because I acknowledge my job is reinforcing poor peoples’ alcoholism. It’s conversations with friends where I’ll double down on a ridiculous statement or mean sentiment because it’s infuriating and hurts to see things change for stupid reasons or to struggle on behalf of dismissing stupid comments as any well-adjusted and understood group of people should be able to do. I really do blame my friends if they go home sad or angry that I called them a pussy for something as trivial as not drinking. We clearly need to better understand each other, or we’re clearly not really friends. I think it bugs people I don’t mind pushing it. If I was upset by something, I’d bring it up with the person. The onus is on me.

But to care about friends is to suffer. To want the best while you watch them be too human, too much like the rest of the world is painful. It’s worse when you recall moments or nights when you were on the brink of something new. When you remember the first time you thought to yourself, “you know, I kinda like you, I think we’ll get along alright.” And it isn’t just about friends. It doesn’t matter what you care about, you’re asking to get hurt, and you’re walking a fine line regarding how you define and relate your situation.

I prioritize things very deliberately. It’s the only reason I ever hold my tongue. It explicitly dictates where I spend my time. In order to do this, I have to be more than comfortable defending the reasons I laid things out in that order. I need to be principled. I need to have rules that, when shaken, still speak to the overall intent. It’s why I’m overly concerned with the idea of “circle-jerking.”

You could argue that life is fundamentally a circle-jerk, and you’ll probably see my nodding along for most of it. I’m not referring to circumstantial jerking, I’m talking about choices. People get together because they’re horny meat sacks intrinsically programmed to not feel bad and get fucked circumstantially, but you choose to stay in a, not-quite-right, situation for longer than you needed to learn your lesson.

For me, it’s an exercise thinking of the myriad of things I could potentially do to speak to my ideas. If I care that we have homeless people, I could work at a food bank. Have I really done anything beyond self-gratifying? A trained monkey can put food on a tray and I arrest my perspective and motivation between an apron and hairnet. Do I hand out eco light bulbs because “every little thing counts” no matter how much I know it doesn’t? Do I go back to school and get specialized degrees because “a specific amount of money will guarantee something” even though it absolutely won’t? It’s circle-jerking.

I don’t need to be loud over a microphone because I’m so fly or so different; I need to by saying something. I don’t really care about your day unless your day made you think about all your other days and what it might do to your days in the future. I don’t want to argue because I don’t care and I don’t want to defend because I prefer to stand and clarify instead of cower. I’m not “passionate” about anything that doesn’t speak to how things actually work and I want to learn how to breed novelty so it can inform a perspective. I need to prove myself right, and I need to know that the language in which I do so you are able to translate.

I didn’t feel like I was circle-jerking in trying to keep my schedule open to hang out with friends. I wanted memories. I wanted shared experiences and to keep replaying the best parties and to allow people to keep being “kids” for as long as possible. Part of me feels like I failed, but another acknowledges that I didn’t go out of my way to manipulate. It just feels like there would be something to regret in washing my hands of these people, but I’m not positive that “something” is universally acknowledged or felt.

I legitimately believe the world is doomed. I don’t want to believe it, but I do. I think it has nothing to do with people being evil, but I do think it has to do with them being in a bubble. In a bubble is where you can deny. In a bubble is where you can disavow. In a bubble you can paint anything you want on the inside to obscure what’s happening outside. I think “smart” people are easy to lose in their mental masturbation and interpersonal anxiety. I think dumb people are fundamentally overgrown scorned children who society gives license to unleash their demons after 18 short years. I think the distance you experience with any person or them to any topic is the bubble inflating. It gets bigger and bigger and only deflates when they honestly acknowledge they’re suffocating.

Lately, it’s been really hard to breathe.

[323] Picture Perfect Perspective

It’s important for me to know my priorities. Your perspective shapes everything. This is really an idea that I can’t belabor enough. It can change as quickly as your environment or it can remain as steadfast as your “thoroughly” thought out ideas. I have religious friends who will believe in God, despite all evidence or reason otherwise, and it shapes their attitudes and behavior seemingly as dramatically as a clear and present danger. They are entirely different people because of one idea. But that’s the thing. I don’t think they really are. I think your perspective is rooted in something deeper that gets hijacked. I think when you are aware of this hijacking it’s hard to take any one view about things overwhelmingly seriously.

I think there are main-stage ideas that pull off a hijacking better than others. These include being beholden to the ideas of your parents, getting into a relationship, believing in a god, extremism in any sense, and falling victim to present hedonism. It’s the last one I’m concerned with because it seems to be the setting of the “phase shift” that all of my old friends are going through. It’s a shift I warned about in however many blogs ago.

It can certainly get old. Whether it is doing certain things or spending too much time or thinking too long, a craving to change takes root. There’s something of a psychological need when it pertains to happiness, there’s a hedonistic want that shapes your decision to change as the “right” one regardless of how you came to that conclusion. It’s the thing where the excuses come from. This is where the lapses in memory reside. I certainly understand this want. I mean, who’s more presently hedonistic than me?

I don’t mind or care if people want to split up and travel around the world or seek certain kinds of jobs. I practice a certain kind of detachment from things that doesn’t make me message or text every friend that’s moved away to remind them of my undying love and affection. Not that I don’t appreciate hearing from someone who’s been thinking about me. I just don’t want my point to get confused when I go further. I don’t mean to force together some idiotic hippie love nest theoretical future model of togetherness. I’m not trying to be deliberately naïve to the wants and needs of other people. I just want to lean on an idea that there are significantly more options when you allow them for yourself.

I picked, for example, to live relatively cheaply, work a form of denigrating job just enough to not go crazy, try to make it to every hang out time and party, and fill in the free time with TV shows, reading, music or other practices. Whether intentional or not, I’ve talked to people who would frame this as “rotting away” in a college town trapped in a sea of retarded college kids. My perspective tells me that I will remember almost every day I spend at the park with my friends in a way that I won’t stacking beer in a cooler. My perspective has informed me of the amount of money I can potentially make when I sacrifice all my time towards some goal, and I’ve learned that I don’t want to spend that much time unless I have to or am thoroughly enjoying whatever it is I’m working on.

My perspective is also shaped by too much news and too many conversations. It really does, as odd as it seems to come across to most people, always weigh on my mind just how much I really have in comparison to the rest of the world. If I rotted away for the rest of my life in this town at a shitty job engaging with infuriating people, it would still be one of the best lives that anyone who’s ever existed has ever lived.

This doesn’t mean I don’t want “more,” I mean, I’m American. It just means I don’t feel a level of angst or maybe sadness when things don’t go my way. Of course I’m not just happy to sit and wait, but there seems to be some form of existential trauma going on with people who didn’t get into grad school or who can’t find the perfect job.

Why I advocate so heavily on behalf of keeping the relationships or surrounding yourself in friends is because that’s worked for me. If I manage to feel something it’s on those “perfect” days or perfect parties or hilarious string of jokes bullshitting with friends or breaking in new personalities. I understand relationships change and people grow apart, but that’s different from forcing yourselves apart to power through your individual forms of hell.

How much of what you expect from yourself comes from “you” and how much is beaten into you by society or some comparison to someone else?

If no one told you that you had to be a certain level of “smart” what would you be interested in? If no one painted a 2 story house with attached garage and a dog as an American Ideal, would you be dramatically upset about not having something resembling it? When I think about doing things to “better myself” it’s in better understanding my relationships. I understand that other people have other metrics, but I promise you, no amount of things I own or far in advance I pay my rent will ever speak to how I conceive of my capacity.

It’s for this reason that when I see relationships failing or being redefined in negative terms for no other reason than distance, I’m skeptical you are doing yourself any favors digging your heals into your new environment. It’s the same skepticism when you get into a relationship because you’re desperately lonely. It’s the same skepticism that tries to keep these blogs indirectly direct so that if you feel something resonate, I didn’t try to tell you how you feel, but hopefully I’m actually speaking to what you feel.

We’re constantly trying to prove things to ourselves, but doing so without keeping in mind the environment we’re working in seems to be destructive. This doesn’t mean to work up the best excuses using a “modern times” theme to arrest action, it means when you send out hundreds of applications and get 2 call backs to less than ideal jobs or schools, it really has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with the shitty infrastructure you’re working in. It means when I don’t do them same thing as you and don’t meet the same kind of disappointment, I was sold on how little was out there earlier and it’s shaped my choices.

I just want you to know why you’re moving away. I want you to see every detail for why or if a relationship has to change. I want you to really feel what the difference is when the balance between friendships and money or time spent in different environments has shifted. I say often that I’m not terribly interested in traveling outside of the novelty and social experimentation because I know wherever I go, damn there I am. And who am I without my relationships to reflect it back?

[322] Better Than My Last Title

I think every living entity is an extension of the universe trying to understand itself.

This is why I have no real conception of right and wrong outside of a specific context. I think every little particle and mystical thing you can say about every individual cell or network of particles we consist of speaks to something so magnificently grandiose that it’s hilarious and the height of folly to pretend like, as the subjects, we’ll understand like the experimenter.

No. this doesn’t mean I believe in a god. This means I think reality is so unbelievably and ridiculously nuanced and convoluted that at most we’ll ever be able to do is “heal the world” or “developed a perpetuating species.”

It sounds vague, vein, egotistical, and cunty when I, at some seriously creepy and fuck me level, feel like I have nothing left to learn. Knowledge is never complete. I don’t mean that I genuinely understand everything. I simply mean, I don’t know what else I need to live a happy or fulfilled life nor what I’d wish for other people.

I regard myself as a relative sociopath. Once you swallow that you get to think about how I manage to have brilliantly amazing friends, a girl more than merely worth “love’ in my life and all the things that come along with being kinda cute and kinda smart. It’s not a secret that you should live for other people, that you should care and sacrifice and worry about and invest and bloody hell make the people you believe in the center of your world.

Everything just feels obvious.

Just because you have a stupid opinion doesn’t mean it isn’t a position an inquisitive and infinitely unbiased universe can’t or wouldn’t want to consider. It’s impossible to judge, no matter how much cheap gratification I will likely continue getting from doing so the rest of my life.

Of course I’m comfortable. Of course I’m taken care of. Of course there are people in my life I can rely on. Of course I can manage. Of course I’m smart enough to “fix” something.

KISS…keep is simple you fucking retard. Kiss. So much is involved with a kiss. Make your message a kiss. Let it be known and proud. Bring other people to the moment. Let it excite and let it linger. Make them laugh and crave and push for more. Put your neck into it! Wish for the awkward and hard so your path can become that much clearer. Double down when they think it’s time to pull away.

Everyone’s a fucking poet. Anyone wanna help me figure out how the fuck I’m to go about doing what all I mean?

[321] In The Jungle

Maybe I go positive. My friends are all smart and motivated; of course they will find jobs or areas to live in that will make them exceedingly happy. Any time there’s been a problem there have been conversations abound that recalculate what it means to appreciate and enjoy each other. Isn’t there something or another about forgiveness and trust that you can say about your best friends? Whether it’s the looks or the attitudes or the general inquisitive and productive natures, there’s something special there worth defending and touting. The dignity and love that comes from choosing your family is incalculable.

Maybe I go neutral. People are a social animal. For better or worse when we share resources or gain a sense of comfort and security, we form tribes that can meet those needs. There is a “healthy amount” of in-group out-group dynamic that plays out depending on access to monetary and time resources and shared mutual interest. Each person fills some form of sexual or emotional roll to varying degrees which can become hotly contested during bouts of miscommunication or alienation. While it is easy to see the strength of the whole, it’s a point of vast intrigue as to how some pups would fare alone in the wild.

Maybe I sound cold. Regardless of what you wish or want, people will be swayed by their stresses more than their ideas. Your friends will start to phrase things in such ways that makes you wish they’d just lie. They’ll leave when they want to be around people. They’ll settle on anyone when they feel too alone. They’ll settle on practical over fulfillment because bills after all. They’ll kill all of their time making little excuses, little concessions, until you no longer recognize each other. Everyone will double down on what it means to judge to make the breaks easier. Life will get to them, they’ll get old, they’ll forget and they’ll regret.

[320] Moving Right Along

I think there are times when your true self can really shine. One thing I’ve tried to consistently shy away from is a growing habit of being one way or another. I’ll allow myself to be awkward or shy or dumb. It helps to keep me in check. It’s one thing to have a perspective and completely another to be dominated by it. It’s not cool to be too cool nor should you ever consider yourself that smart. If you choose to capitalize on one thing, do you dare forget what you may be sacrificing?

In a sense, it’s rather boring having your priorities in order. There doesn’t appear to be much wiggle room for some “crazy shit” to just happen or some new worthwhile memory to sneak itself in. Like, I’ve always pretty much hated the bar scene. I don’t mind a fuck ton of drunk people or loud music. I’ve just never understood spending a shit ton of money to be around people who are significantly prettier in the dark on the off chance you’ll find the right words to fuck a girl you’re not totally but just enough into.

You can look at a bar scene as a microcosm in power playing. Are you sporting the right look? Can you bring the right comments or perfectly time your smile? It’s just not exciting, or meaningful, or even a challenge. I may have to severely reevaluate my whore status when I have someone cute practically thrown at me and it’s like “eh, but what does this say about me?”

When I experience anxiety, it comes from not making up my mind. I know how to handle myself in a violent situation. I know what needs to be said or not during a bar hook up, and I can talk my way into them laughing at me when the cops show up. Anxiety comes from confusion. It’s who I’m going to be in this moment and why. Luckily, I sort of default to a kind of boring lame representation if only to quell potential drama, but I’m very not convinced that will consistently win out as time goes on.

I wonder how, even with the potential anxiety of not making up my mind, that I have such a sense of self. Why do I consider myself worthy of or pursuing a purpose? What clicked with me to find a sense of responsibility to myself or to different people in my life? This especially with the ability and…temptation?...to be any number of other things. Yet I can always rely on myself when things get “serious.”

Even to presumed friends, if you want to start flitting with a line, it doesn’t matter my mood, my mind finds itself prepared to be the worse person you know. This always happens. I never am without a comment or a prepared course of action if things get “serious.” I suppose the thinking tactician would try to catch me off guard in a questionable middle ground, but fuck you I just pointed it out so it can’t be that vulnerable

Do you get opportunities to show your “true” self? Do you see the flicker of what’s really happening deep inside presented to you as an opportunity to display it for the rest of the world? I’ve always fashioned myself as someone who seems to see that potential in people. Of course, I never like to bring it up or discuss it with them as it just sort of spoils the fun and alters the future. I need to make sure Marty McFly’s mom gets fucked by the right guy or things get complicated.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be “smart” or “too smart” or “insane.” I like the quote about technology advancing to a point where if you couldn’t really understand it, it would be tantamount to magic. I’d like to think people can operate this way as well. I really hesitate to consider myself smart, but I’m totally onboard with toying with insane or different. And in the right context, it really doesn’t matter. What does it mean to have a potentially megalomaniacal understanding of something you don’t really want anything to do with? Are your talents even worthwhile or just a cumbersome hiccup in your ability to cope?

I don’t do enough and I don’t know when I’ll feel like I do. I haven’t learned enough for the sake of learning, I haven’t given enough for the sake of giving, and I certainly haven’t been able to project an envisioned lifestyle to the extent I think it deserves. Every little side road decision is a joke when I think about all that I’m not doing. Of course I didn’t fuck the girl at the bar, of course I didn’t cut that friend down when they pushed, of course I landed on a few more words stated slightly differently a few more times.  

[319] Brain Dump, Still Dumping

Brain Dump: Still Dumping

I think there’s wisdom in letting problems resolve themselves. When I have problems, which is rare, they usually aren’t even real. Given that perspective, I have to do practically nothing in order for them to go away. What’s more taxing than problems are responsibilities. Those were at least choices you made to be something or someone towards something. Anything resembling stress in my life comes from perhaps adopting too many abstract responsibilities.

I find it odd how little or different it is when I think of “moral quandaries.” It’s never so much that I can’t, or shouldn’t. It usually boils down to what I’m going to have to do in the wake of a decision in order to display a message I want. I think a lot of people would find this idea troubling. I also think they are potentially weak of imagination. To not see that the power comes from what you choose not simply your ability to do so is sad.

As a tool, I suppose I’m explicitly after power. I like shit to get done and make sense. Things just run smoother when people allow you the power over them to move the mountain where you want it. I think there is a difference in a pursuit of power for a goal, and being psychologically dominated by an overwhelming need to feel powerful. I’m well-rehearsed in withdrawing. I don’t need to talk a little louder or puff my chest out to make it clear to all the swinging cocks in the room.

Why would I choose to do otherwise? The nature of choice is at the very least precarious. Nature verses nurture, your environment against your philosophy. What if it’s simply a capacity dictated by your ability to resonate with the pattern and consequences? To say, I’ve seen this enough times, in all likelihood if X then Y, therefore my decision to do otherwise.

The sickest thing I think about what I want to accomplish in the future is that it won’t leave things any better. It won’t matter what I create or who I help or what I teach, it will be the minority to some psychological problem or system of government or form of disaster. In that way, it makes it extremely selfish. All I need to do is prove to me. If I’m so far up my own ass, I better impress or what the fuck am I doing here, right? Of course there are people I admire, but even there one must tread lightly. Like, let your favorite band play music, never hear them out about politics. It can also be a breeding grown for cynicism.

I don’t think as a society we talk enough about what it means to be bored. These hookers at the point and addicts on black tar heroin inevitably say they got bored. They wanted to try something new. They used to have all these things going for them, but something just wasn’t clicking for them. Is it not when we’re bored and alone that anxious or depressed feelings start to kick in? Don’t they refer to it as “not being stimulating enough” when you’re the smart kid who should be moved up a few grades? If we thought of boredom as a kind of withdrawal, maybe we could better identify what we’re addicted to.

I used to really hate catch-all phrases or clichés to describe things. It didn’t occur to me that they have a utility as a kind of short hand between two people who’ve had shared or similar experiences. “Bitches be crazy.”

I sometimes feel like I get away with murder. It’s a license I grant myself, and while it only goes so far, it usually goes farther than a “normal” person would allow themselves. I don’t play hood or gangster. I don’t want little tear drop tattoos or to be so used to pain and oppression that I have nothing to lose. I just want to borrow from that world a form of the disposition when it’s needed. When you use something in earnest, it’s hard to argue that it’s not real. This does not apply for magic sky daddies.

I’m hoping brand dumping will put me on the trail of a genuine problem. I’ve felt inexplicably on track for an exceedingly long amount of time. I’m not looking for something to go wrong mind you, but something is always wrong, so why can’t I seem to find the words to talk about it? We all know this country is getting scary and I don’t want to be here anymore. I know how I want to spend my time and money. I know who I feel responsible for and to. I’m not sick. All of my friends are being weird, but I chalk that up to the lesson we’ve previously learned at how terrible they are at solving problems that aren’t problems. Time will win.

I don’t like being told I’m not happy. It feels like an insult. How could someone be so blind? Why would they project their problem? It’s such an antithetical point to the truth. There’s always a capacity to be happier, but to throw it in someone’s that they aren’t happy, trying to drag them down with you, is more than distasteful. It’s this sharing in mutual squalor and misery that allows people an excuse to stay there. After all, it’s where the parties at. Look at all the new excuses and personal, untouchable, truths and reasons for being so. My advice is to tread likely before you diagnose my disposition or I’ll help myself to dictating yours.

What does it mean to regard something as an opportunity? Is it a kind of wish fulfillment? You always wanted a stable job, so one shows up and you take it regardless of the details? You see yourself “growing” as a person because you gain the wisdom of the most jaded in your field? I think we shift and morph, not grow. You can find wise people at any age given what they’ve had to endure or what they discovered in living through it. I don’t think I’m after some peak. There is no “ultimate Nick P.” For “better” or “worse” I’ll simply be the sum total of my experiences.  The ever present choice is what matters.

[318] Brain Dump

I just want to brain dump. No promise of continuity or clarity.

I think I define stupid differently from most people. I think it’s stupid to not understand your life under a greater backdrop. If something feels super awesome and compelling in a moment, or even for a period of time, I think to consider it in a bubble is naïve. I think I see a lot of people get hurt and defensive when they do this. I also think that just because you can “get by” behaving a stupid way, it doesn’t mean it’s justified, healthy, or worthwhile. I think this applies frequently to relationships, but also with work and the varying degrees of drama you’re willing to put up with from friends or yourself.

I think I often understand where people are coming from and simply can’t make myself respect it. I’m rarely convinced, not so much that someone isn’t thinking it through, but that they’re sacrificing a kind of understanding about themselves or the context for the short term satisfaction. Yes, this can apply to myself as well, but I’m biased towards my reasoning and generally don’t catch flak when I explain the details behind a seemingly contradictory action or position. I’m ever unimpressed when I challenge someone to do the same. It’s confusing why you have to get so angry.

I think I get lost in the details of trying to talk to people when I’m not positive what my voice is. I adopt so many hats to fit a situation, I endlessly find a way around or the proper tone or do whatever it takes that to presume I have a sort of solid-state of identity starts to become ludicrous. The best thing I can do to help define myself is in the things I do or the company I keep. Clearly some form of agenda makes itself present by what you enable. It’s because of this I don’t feel lost, but it’s no less a distraction when I scrutinize every word when all I had to do was get the point across.

I wonder to what degree my capacity to be a loner affects my relationships. I certainly make clear lines and experience different levels of comfort depending on who I’m around and for how long. But I wonder if there’s something psychologically deeper going on. I think more intriguing the idea that other people could perceive a change when my mind goes to cavernous secret space. I’m also happy that being a loner doesn’t mean feeling alone. No matter what I do, I never feel just isolated. In fact, a feeling of isolation prompts a kind of freedom to start exploring.

I’m quite intrigued by the concept of a “voice.” It harps on ideas of an identity or soul or some timeless essence. It doesn’t matter when you hear it, it can apply to different things at different points, and if you’re familiar with where it came from you can identify it “naturally.” I think the only way to have a voice is to use it frequently. If you’re not saying anything, people can’t even pretend to grasp where you’re coming from. I also think you need to act in line with what you say. When you’re real world examples line up so nicely with your words, it builds trust and integrity and you’re given a form of power.

I think people crave power, but only because they feel helpless. It’s always kind of disturbing to me when I see what lengths people are willing to go to essentially mimic the failed positions of their predecessors. There’s only real power is foregoing being a slave to it. Again, it’s being effortless. When you make a decision, roll with it. When you make a friend, stick to them.  If you create something, stand by and celebrate it. To take pride in your journey allows you to focus on making the most of it without endless re-contextualizing in lieu of unrealized and unreasonable futures.

I’m marginally concerned that nothing I do or say regarding time will translate to other people. Money can always be made, stuff can always be bought or acquired, time you never get back. I don’t think other people think about time like that. I think time is like a puzzle people try to fill in well in advance. I’ll get married here, I’ll get promoted here, I’ll have kids here, I think a vacation around this time would be nice, maybe around the year 2030 I’ll be able to do this. I think this is small. I think it’s somehow psychologically comforting and provides a false sense of security. I think it locks you into a box of limited potential when the reality is infinite.

The non-respect thing plays heavily into my psychological capacity to do things. Your “manager” title means nothing to me. Your official stature or professional air doesn’t resonate.  Surely, for practical reasons I don’t tell you this or treat you differently, but god forbid you catch a glimpse of my eyes or smile. What sucks is that I wouldn’t mind actually being told what to do by someone who really had a grasp of what they were doing. It’s not that I merely hate taking orders, it’s simply the vast majority of orders I’ve taken have been ill-timed, wastes of effort, or utter bullshit.

I also think about the idea of “different” or “special.” Again, these only make sense in a context or relative timeframe, but I’m speaking about something more than circumstantial difference. Of course every one of my friends is different, but who’s really different. As far as I know, I’m the only one who semi-consistently yells fuck in a crowded room or concerns myself with “fixing the world.” Who are the Jeremy Gotwals' and Mickey Woods that can be used as definers of the genre. I have similar friends who want to own businesses or hold similar ideas about relationships. At that level then I have a group of really different people against the world at large.  In a band, you have maybe a hundred people who play an instrument, but who’s the musician and why?

I remember what it was like to have an amazing memory and endless focus. When I thought you could simply explain to religious people all the things they didn’t know, I learned a ton and I learned fast. You develop habits that beget more knowledge and you have default methodologies to engaging with people who don’t even understand they’re entering the conversation at a predictable and calculable level. Whether your measuring their disposition, their ability to concede, their insistence on a particular point, or some overall idea regardless of the details, when you engage enough, you know where it can go or not.

That period reminds me of my capacity, but it’s spoiled my present. I don’t need to learn anymore that people are intractable. I’m sold. As much as it sometimes makes me sick, people will pull on their feelings before they count something. The world literally looks to me like, “hey, there are 4 beans in this jar” and someone tells me “no no no, because I feel like this or want to define ‘bean’ differently there’s really only 3.”

And I know people think that I’m trying to exude a kind of ego or dominance or maybe intellectual certitude. I really have no defense against that. I don’t know how to sound less that way when I’m not making a personally compelling argument. I don’t lead with “I feel like.” I reference studies or numbers. Those make people feel bad; therefore, I’m missing the hidden specialness of their position.

I hate the idea of people knowing they are hiding more than the hiding itself. It’s one thing to grow up afraid or strangled by a context that you don’t know any better. This is why I hate the smart people. They make more excuses and justifications than any idiot. Idiot’s just roll with it and think it’s matter-of-fact. Smart people know they’re being ridiculous and then hide. They know they’re being dishonest and try to employ guilt for poking at their system or some other form of straw-man. That’s where you find a true definition of hypocrisy.

[317] Less Than Average

Because I’m marginally frustrated and it’s stupid to drink this early in the morning, I want to run with a few ideas.

I think our expectations beget almost as much of our reality as our actions. That is to say, when you expect a certain standard, and you hold true to it, you do in fact raise yourself or your environment to that standard. In a world dominated by average, disengaged, or disenfranchised people, the standard will always remain “average.” It is in dealing with this pervasive proclivity of man that I get frustrated.

Why bother doing anything? If you’re doing it wrong, it’s going to suck, it’s going to just make peoples’ lives shittier, why bother doing it? Maybe there was a quick profit to be made. Surely I could conjure up many short term goals where the long term impact is written off. But what does that say about you? Are we really a species of sociopaths or utterly un-empathetic beings hell bent on causing destruction? This seems unlikely; the standards are just so low.

I could learn endlessly and get paid constantly by people picking up their phones or answering emails. For a species so socially networked, we’re really good at ignoring each other. I have these conflicting parts in me that wants to get everything done “now now now,” yet, I realize at the pace the world operates, I could scale back 2 nows and be light years ahead of “competition.” The only thing that works is people on the same page. When you have to go too far outside of your circle, you have to hold too many hands; all you get is a lot of time filled with a lot of bullshit.

I barely have any opinions. That is to say, I’m always ready to change my mind. By the time I’m prompted to make a sweeping statement, I’ve probably run the same experiment 20 times. I hate Best Buy, but not before going there and being disappointed in 20 different ways. I may think something about a person, but it’s usually after they get the chance to show their ass in every interaction I’ve been with them. “My world” therefore, mostly consists of what I have a hard time being persuaded otherwise as objective facts. They are facts about happiness, facts about efficiency, facts about social or political structures, and facts about consequences. They are always limited by our human shell and perspective, but for all pragmatically concerned can be regarded as facts.

Fact, when you have an answerable question, you’d more like to have it answered than not. When talking with someone, it doesn’t feel good to get railroaded and ignored. When you have an expectation or want to get a job done, it is disappointing when things go opposite of said expectations. When you are paying someone for a service, you expect to get said service. Mind blowing stuff so far, right? Maybe 1/30 customer service lines I’ve ever called have figured these things out.

I have no memory for names or even simple meaningless tasks at a part-time job, until I need to. When the keys are thrown at me and they say “surprise you’re responsible for this and that” it’s amazing how fast the light switch turns on. But that’s me. Can you just throw the keys at people and expect things to go well? My hunch is to say fuck no. Is it taught, a personality, or a learned facet of a personality? How do you raise the standard? How do you find more people you can throw keys at and say “you’ll figure it out?”

I get the sense that everyone is just sort of waiting around to die. There’s like a handful of people who really want to be here and see things change and grow and work, and the rest of the world just wants to die. How can they give a fuck about you or your ideas when they have to keep in mind to hit the liquor store before they get home? What concern is it of theirs your political or philosophical theory, they never expected to own such a fine shit hole in the woods or keep offspring alive as long as they have. We are an infantile circumstantial species. We don’t recognize our impact and just sort of flow with the shitty environments we’ve been born into. Look no further than how we participate in a “democracy.”

I think there is enough access to resources in this country. They maybe aren’t being allocated as well, but I think most people most of the time can get by with what even our poor people do. I hear from anyone wanting the things I do. In fact, I only ever alienate people when I hint at the things I want. This is my whole life, so I’m going to figure I’m a bit different. Either way, it’s why I think there’s a greater, consistently more fucked psychological problem. And, I think the dumber you are, the obviously less equipped you are to deal with your potential psychological issues.

I’ve lost count of my friends with diagnosed depression. I roll with a smart crowd. There’s something more pervasive than “everyone’s dumb.” I’ve also lost count of the number of people who’ve grown up in some form of an abusive household. Like, what’s it take to get 2 mentally healthy people to find each other? I think my perspective on people, to treat them like animals, has helped me. There’s obviously more nuance, but not that much nuance, to the human psyche. They’re irrational and afraid first, you’re sick if you needlessly abuse them, but sometimes they do things in which they need to be given up or put down.

My gut, I mean everything I read all the time, informs me that things are progressively worse each day. Never is the headline “plan to destroy more of the environment nixed out of common sense.” More headlines you never see: “Scientists consulted on new energy plans to save country billions.” “War ended because people realized they don’t want to needlessly die or kill noncombatants.” “Congressman sites philosophers/economists in brilliant appeal against bill.” It’s more drones, more weapons, more fear mongering, more lies and doublespeak, more propaganda, more gossip, more surveillance, more destruction and war all around….at least in this country.

[316] Dainty Ogre Gold-Plated Pitchfork Collectors

I’d like to talk about objectification and hypocrisy, and man, is shit gonna be magic. I’m a firm believer in nailing down terms, and the ladies, to make sure we grasp just what it is we mean when we pull those little buggers from our arsenal.

Let’s start with objectifying. I was recently accused of objectifying people and merely being “kind of a doosh” when it came to interacting with people. While I would hardly deny my potential doosh tendencies, it dose sting a little when it comes from someone that you previously liked more than a little.

So I got to thinking about objectifying, what it really means. We are comprised of potentially invigorating or objectionable tendencies or attributes. To regard them, that is, to take them under consideration, can be made to be understood as “objectifying.” Are we not objects? A hand severed from a body, is a hand. Do you speak of the soul of the hand? Do you characterize its personality? I challenge a single one of you to describe the Adams’ family hand as boisterous or intractable.

I think to find someone, or something about them attractive, is not the same thing as to treat them as a train set. It’s not the same kind of enjoyment; it’s not irrespective of the being attached to those attributes. I mean, please, we live in the internet age. A body without a face or a little backstory might as well be another pilled on in a Holocaust grave. I don’t feel guilty pointing out the luck you had in not being born looking like Gollum. If I based how I treated all people or made moralistic or impractical judgments because of my innate gag reflex, then yes, that’s pretty terrible. But to pretend that’s what it’s about because I offer a compliment…like, weak.

Then I think what if I was objectified. How shitty do I feel when someone likes or doesn’t the curls in my hair? What if they don’t like a tummy verses a six pack? What if I’m too tall, too hairy, or too dead in the eyes to pop their clit right from behind their jeans? I still have to accept their judgment. I have to make myself feel icky. I have to deny my history, my proclivities, my understanding, and my current reality and validate that opinion. Who in their right mind thinks there is much utility or purpose in “objectifying” people? Make jokes and comments all day; unfortunately I’m past the point I’m going to throw it in your face like I’m on the defensive.

So I’m sure this can tie into hypocrisy somehow right? If you adopt an over-reaching conception of change, hypocrisy can’t exist. For in order to contradict yourself, you need to have a hard-lined perpetual self to stand in contrast to. You need to be saying “I am this unshakeable idea at the same time I am this unshakeable idea,” which just seems naïve and unreasonable. I think it’s too easy to be a hypocrite. It speaks to why I hate the word love. You can plaster it on anyone and anything just given your small perspective on who they are.

I think changing your mind, evolved philosophy, and personal indignation mascaraed as hypocrisy. People don’t like your reasons, they don’t understand your reasons, but very simply, you can’t stand in utter contrast to how you actually believe and are behaving. You’re no more a hypocrite than you are non-existent. For ideas and potential to be challenging or nuanced, is not the same thing as them contradicting your being. Like, every time I don’t make a fat joke within ear shot, is that hypocritical, or just smart and kinda nice?

Also, if you don’t have a grasp of the subject you’re bound to look “hypocritical” about, the judgment goes even farther out the window. You can’t even define the terms! You have a small and shifting position. Now that you’ve gained a perspective or managed to have something invested, it’s time to demonize you as a hypocrite? Maybe you’re just learning. Maybe you’ve just brushed against something that you never knew you needed to be informed about. Maybe you’re just utterly fucking terrible at arguing or laying out what it is you actually think. Then, you could even be made out as a hypocrite for getting smarter!

I think it’s important for me to suss out what I mean by these terms because I anticipate my life changing dramatically. Whether it’s getting paid massive amounts of money for making phone calls, or deciding to reorganize my social structure, to the untrained eye, it’ll be, hell, to any eye, it’ll be really easy to just judge and feel and make all sorts of blah blah blah comments about. Here’s my offer of insight. If it clicks in your head, we’re money. If not, well, fuck it I tried, guess it’s not that important anyway, right?

[315] This House Is Not A Home

I’m bad in that I expect things. I expect myself to hold certain standards and ideas about myself. While seemingly all of my friends struggle with things like crippling depression or personal insecurities, I’m poised with my finger over the button that initiates the perfect time to helicopter dick in the middle of the mall, and laugh maniacally about it. My potential for seemingly endless or reckless joy knows no bounds. I genuinely don’t feel like the common hang-ups of life really apply to me. I attempt to think around them and live in a world that allows me to expect things. Yet, I find I’m ever humbled by my naïve expectations.

It’s one of those things that speak to why I call myself a loner. No amount of friends really means they grasp or even want to pretend to grasp how or why I think something. Even if they agree, it’s hardly ever “Nick P., that makes a lot of sense, I’m going to try to start doing that right now too.” This doesn’t mean that every habit or potentially good idea I have can be adopted over night, but there is a certain kind of person and a certain kind of mindset that behaves like mine. Ask Byron about it.

What I suppose bugs me the most is my inability to quell the anger. It’s not even that I don’t expect the things that come. But even seeing things coming for years will get to me. The failing expectation in that moment is that “things could be making more sense.” In actuality, the moment is playing out in a way I would consider nonconstructive, caddy, or pathetic. It gets even better when people like to play the vague fool. Well I didn’t know, well I thought you thought, didn’t so and so tell you, it’s not about this it’s about that, why can’t you understand where I’m coming from…

I think it speaks to what makes life feel like perpetual punishment. Like you always get to be self-conscious or on edge about something because even when you try to be well or plan right, it’s always with the bombs going off around you. The only thing that calls for a cease fire is firmly planting yourself in an environment that’s theoretically above all the explosions. I like to think of that environment as my friends, but to carry the analogy further, I feel offered up as a meat shield with the mindset “he can take it” often enough I don’t really know where to go but to be kind of dead inside.

No, this doesn’t mean woe is me; it’s more of the perpetual “fuck-everything” air I adopt when things go stupidly for stupid reasons. Like, of course I’ll find new roommates and figure out a way to keep saving money, and run my shit, and do side jobs and whatever else. Of course I will. I’m Nick P. I don’t need the respect to be talked to deliberately. I shouldn’t expect honest conversations or assessments about the how or why I influence people’s lives or try to provide for a certain kind of lifestyle. That has nothing to do with it, Nick P. If you don’t first and forever remember people do things for generally irrational or selfish reasons, then consider the fallout after, you’re setting yourself up to get pissed off again.

I suppose I always fall back to the expectations of myself. I expect I know how to treat people in situations that are going poorly. I expect I know how I’ll find a way out of it. I expect to polish the jaded shell and work out all the commentary in jokes that hit a little too close that I laugh a little too long about. That’s fine. I think I’m lucky that I have standards. I’m lucky I have people in my life that I can point to as examples of what I respect and what I want everyone to be like. When you’re “on my bad side” it has nothing to do with you, you’re just like the rest. You don’t have the capacity to understand what I seek in a friend. That’s your choice and I hope it makes you feel comfortable.

[314] As Straightly As I Can Put It Up There

 To be, or not to be, those are the inclinations. I feel for like an exceedingly long time, I’ve had every topic under the sun actively on my mind, with no real way to approach them. But, alas a moment of clarity ensued, and in a stout matter-of-factness, I’ll begin exploring.

I think there’s an undeniable psychological impact tied to money. Look back not 2 or 3 blogs ago and I’m sure (maybe) I’ve made reference to or status about having $10 in the bank and slowly picking away at the cans of salt to eat in the pantry. Fast forward with a part time job and side jobs, I feel like the king of the slums; this even more so because I don’t have any debt.

I think about the projects I want to do in the future and the potentially sickening amount of money it would take to do them well. Then I think about the bureaucracy and greed that positions money into the hands of powers with concerns deliberately antithetical to mine. Then I think of the little rays of sunshine meant to boost or disguise actual moods or perspectives trying to reinforce that the world is still good from time to time. Then I inevitably get stuck thinking about time, and how maddeningly long it takes to change things even and though they will always eventually.

Then I try to scale problems up and down. Will I run into a lack of data, a bad philosophy, a saboteur, the cash runs out, the timing is off, or did too many players break too many legs? Should I focus on how I feel? How I fit? How it translates? What I thought going into it? Is it my perspective or intention that matters? Is it my message or what people do with it? Is it either/or, and if not why have I resolved myself to something so obscure?

I rely on cause and effect. Just as being broke was my choice, an inevitability of listening to the sick feeling in my gut at the idea of applying to be told to ring out drunks and move boxes from one end of the room to another, taking the cash and “stumbling” into various other opportunities were choices as well. I haven’t cured what I feel; I simply pick what I’m going to do about it.

I’m not necessarily worried, but I think this is going to get me in a bit of trouble. When I stop feigning a concern for the consequences, well, practice something long enough…I feel I will be more explicit in petty things and more aggressive in things that matter. The trouble is simply picking up all the ruffled feathers.

I think I’ve adopted the ultimate freedom in “winging it.” I’ve been trying to analogize this for weeks. Absolute control of reckless abandonment. Steering the stream sweeping you along. Resolved to the infinitely possible. Real hippie shit, right? But in a weird way, I feel I give myself more room to wiggle by constraining myself to different aspects of my previously peripheral worlds. I don’t know if they felt so suffocating because they’d grown unfamiliar, or if I hadn’t had a chance to experience them with the hat of new experience. Reliably, I don’t feel complacent.

The idea of an “infinite consequence” intrigues me. It would hint at a purpose, maybe even a soul. I think some of my moral sensibilities stem from a concern with this idea. Why I sneak in a good deed for a random stranger from time to time. Why I’d like to believe I’m only corruptible to a certain point. I wonder if there are real capacities and propensities more than just probabilities. Are we doomed to be stupid and evil and inventing new ways to draw cartoons face palming? Or is that just the most likely from the context? I’m so disturbed by context.

[313] Undercover Brother

To be human is to struggle. It’s the core of life. You have to find food and companionship. You’re lucky if you’re entertained or just weren’t born with a particular defect. I’m shaken to my core when I see what people are meant to cope with. Everything about our psychology and decision making seems to be rooted in various coping mechanisms. We desperately need to escape; we absolutely need something to believe in that is greater than our current lot in life.

For the first time since it aired I started watching Undercover Boss. CEO’s taking on the minimum wage jobs and finding out the working world little resembles bitching people out over the phone and holding meetings. I’m disturbed by it because I find it emotionally jarring. It uses the emotionality of hearing about the health conditions of an employee’s family member, or will detail their financial woes. At the end the CEO usually gives a raise or a check, there’s plenty of tears, and we’re supposed to believe “things are gonna change round here!”

I read a critique of the show explaining that even if the CEO decided the employees needed higher wages or truly did find a new appreciation for what happens on the ground floor, the company the reviewer was talking about was publicly traded. The board decides just how much labor they think needs to be squeezed. The financial, business, and government institutions loom in the background despite the CEO’s “Christian principles” or how many tears they cry for their associates living in homeless shelters.

Everyone has that story though. Everyone has a sick relative, is in massive debt, or found an asshole to marry or knock them up. Everyone needs just a little bit more money, a little bit more time, just one person to look out for them. I feel like it’s dumb to even ask “are people happy” when the closer you look you wonder what would ever give you the impression that they should be. Are these CEO’s not small-minded enough to realize that no matter how much money thrown at specific employees they met, they’re not fundamentally changing the lives of thousands of other employees? They’re not changing the business culture, they just went into it to find out why Connecticut stores were failing only to be blindsided by real people with real problems.

If all you can do is cope, how insultingly silly does it sound to try and talk of happiness? So many, too many people are willing to work ridiculously hard to even scrape by in life. I don’t see a culture that respects or understands that. These businesses all talk about their hundreds of stores and how their poised to get even bigger. I know the amount one store can waste, let alone what’s just numbers on a balance sheet when you manage hundreds. But that’s business culture. Get bigger, make more money.

One of these CEO’s turned alcoholic before we switched to a new CEO role. Even at the top you can find time to ignore your family and get down on yourself. But I wonder what “hell” he had to go through being able to afford the kind of health services that would allow him to carry on in life.

I try to get people to focus on the reasons they should be happy. I want someone to actually espouse something. I don’t want to hear a survivalist mantra; I’m fairly convinced that’s more genetic code than positive philosophy. But how can I expect it? What tools besides my “ignore all the fucks guide” to my thoughts can or should I contribute?

But this is why I’m after culture. I think there are a lot of people with a lot to give and that the better demons of our nature, when ignored, carry on in a demonic fashion. It’s not just equal pay, it’s a fundamental understanding and respect of what it means to be human and work hard. What it means to earn something and respect that someone deserves it. These CEOs can’t operate a forklift, but because they can bitch a little louder about shipping discrepancies, they deserve 100 times more an hour?

As someone who considers himself always happy and always angry, I feel like a fool. If both make sense conditionally, and the conditions exist at the same time, how could I ever advocate for one without the other? If the happiness and pride you take from your shitty job keeps you going back to it every day, and you stay fed, or your kids are provided for, what else should I expect? But what does it say about life that we’re, theoretically so advanced, that we still have to treat our special times as “an escape?” Nothing in my life compares to the average person’s day to day level of bullshit, and if it does, I’ve somehow managed to boil it down to something or another about balance that shuts me up for a few weeks at a time.

This feels disconnected. There are so many angles that speak to the culture I want changed; the shitty ideas of growth “because,” the fact that you can’t shoot a t-shirt into a crowd and clothe a stadium, the idea that because people are sick it should cripple you or your family’s life. You can have a full time job and still have to live in a homeless shelter. You can know the inside out of your factory and get paid like you genuinely aspire to nothing more than being “kind of homeless.” These are systemic problems, these are culture problems, and they are universally understood as something people wish would change.

You have to undermine the power, provide an alternative, and market ideals that speak to more than the desperate part of a human’s psyche. The bad they’re swallowing isn’t what rounds out the good they teach and preach. So maybe the happiness they muster comes from many places. Maybe there’s an appreciation for their ability to feel it at all. Or maybe it’s just where you go when you hit the bottom. I mean, desperation can be a motivator, but it shouldn’t be an institution.

[312] Land Hooooooo

I will say this as concisely and honestly as I can. I do not seek to judge, I do not pretend to have all or perfect knowledge, and I am not after a fight. I’m writing after many conversations and avenues of feedback, and matching those against my own observations. I hope before feathers are ruffled a conversation can be had, and if it is shown that a ship may be headed in the wrong direction, we can steer it back.

I feel the group dynamic changing. My current theory is that it boils down to how the boys treat the girls. I think there’s a lot of side bar conversations about what someone feels verses where the other person is coming from or if there’s just some over thought or insecurity playing into things. But, ultimately I think those pale in comparison to a kind of respect that seems to be slowly eroding.

I’ve got it in me to be as big a perv as the best of them. Lately though, I find myself turned off to how I hear girls in general talked about, or the endless awkward encounters they seem to find themselves in when relating to our group. I think there is a distance being put between our girl friends’ feelings and the sort of “we’re so hot” persona. Whether it’s an in-group out-group thing related to climbing or fitness, I don’t know.

I can see an overzealous attitude or misplaced confidence push “the group” apart. Particularly when it comes to roping in our girls as one’s in a queue in between Okcupid hookups. I feel like there has been a steadily increasing creepy factor that shrouds the guy/girl interactions. Whether it’s Asher-esc touching where no touching need be, or lingering hugs and deep breaths just because someone’s going to bed or entered the room, there’s a subtext. It’s like Mad Men, enter a room, pour a drink, invite someone into the room, and pour another drink; I’m hammered just watching before 10 am.

I now worry about introducing new people into the group. Where once I was ridiculously proud and interested in what a new cool personality would do around a bunch of cool people, I’m significantly more worried about “the sharks circling.” If I say “hey, I messaged Jen and brought her around” the awkward what-the-hell-are-you-talking about response is to say your percentage match is higher or you’ve spent more time texting or making out with her. I’m not trying to compete, I didn’t message her to eventually fuck, and that gets kind of lost when everyone’s initial response is to caveman the conversation to some level of “dibs.”

I’m concerned because I think the people most likely to pick up on the how and why things are changing are the same one’s we don’t see around as often. I’ve at least been the asshole long enough who can watch and predict that if shit got too wrong I could cut ties and go about my day. But the nice people and the emotionally involved people or the willing to make excuses for you/us people aren’t even up to it anymore.

Confidence, a concern for your health or appearance, and even a good group of friends are no substitute for humility. I don’t even want to pretend like I’m trying to point fingers because I can conjure a good ten reasons, for each of our friends, completely outside what’s been witnessed or talked about that can speak towards how different things have played out. The only “secret” to getting along with people or having a satisfying sex life that I wish wouldn’t get lost is a sense of honesty and respect for how you’re spending that time and who you’re doing it with.

[311] Batting A Thousand

So I’m one of those cool kids. As in, I can “understand” where the other cool kid is coming from and reach this copacetic middle ground where we mutually respect each other’s place in life. Except, fuck them.

For as much as I run a little ringer on people, I really can’t stand when people try to turn it on me. I’m good with being a hypocrite as far as shit’s concerned. Where do you get off me calling you on what you’re doing and your refusal to acknowledge that I’ve seen through you’re little scheme. You little bitch lol.

I feel like I am perpetually open to misrepresentation. It’s frankly habit by now. It really doesn’t matter what you say or how you say it, people will decide to understand you in their terms, and it’s your responsibility to “respect” those terms and follow some form of suit.

Why do I crash “random” peoples’ conversations?

I’m not seeking something new. I don’t think I’m going to learn of some perspective. I really feel like I do it so I can feel sad. So I can connect with the tumultuous failings of people and sort of “re-up” just how fucked it is to think differently than I do.

It sucks because I really feel bad for people. Weird right? I’m all “fuck you and shit” and yet I have this like pain in my stomach that’s like “this can’t be all.”

I don’t like other alleged “cool kids.”

My disposition isn’t terribly of choice. I feel like I got here from thinking too goddamn much and over intellectualizing a process that is only concern with whether or not you manager to nut enough times in some chicks vagina. But at the same time, there’s some semblance of respect given the implications of acting like some amoral node that disregards what it means to be human.

I do get angry. Like, super angry. And I really don’t know how to translate that in a way that doesn’t make it “personal.” Because, it kind of is, but in a more important way really isn’t. I don’t pretend like I’m better. I’m not on some thrown. I’m just confused that we don’t do what makes the most sense. And ya, it pisses me the fuck off.

Just talking to this Indian kid about his experience with relationships tonight is enough. It’s so unbelievably sad. There is no guidebook from taking him out of how bad he’s been fucked. And he’s going to make decisions about life and love from how he got shit on as a teenager. My god. The idea that we’re literally handicapped by the stupid shit we may or may not encounter as kids…

As long as people aren’t happy, fuck us. I don’t want a species to keep on and evolve that’s perpetually sad and despotic. The reasons I don’t believe in us is because of our default attitudes toward life. For every optimist you’ll find a hundred thousand circumstantial pessimists It’s not conversation and logical debate that changes them. I feel hopelessly naïve in believing they might’ve worked.

The secret is not killing yourself. If you find a platform to do what you do that overwhelms the objectively reasonable positions you may take on ending your time here, you may as well be a “god.”

It’s hard to swallow how stupid you are. Like, why the fuck bother inventing words and thinking about things, right? But, at the end of the day, you just have your stupid ideas and your stupid reasons that pretend to grasp the entirety of your position.